I held up a hand. “You don’t need to remind me that I’m a bastard; I remember that part,” I said. “It’s the other part I’m having trouble with—why I’m a bastard. Okay?”
She glared a little more, and I heard her toe tapping the floor, and then she uncrossed her arms and took a deep breath. “All right,” she said. “I’ll play your little game, you son of a bitch.” She pointed at me, and if her finger had been loaded I would have died right then and there. “You had an affair with that bitch from work—a detective called me!” she said, as if
a detective calling her proved everything beyond a doubt. “And he said did I know anything about her and the affair you had and were there any more pictures! And then it was on the news that she’s dead, and Jesus Christ, Dexter, did you kill her, too, so I wouldn’t find out?”
I am pretty sure that some level of my brain was still working, because apparently it reminded me to breathe. But all the higher mental functions seemed to be completely shut down; little fragments of thought scuttled past but none of them seemed able to pull themselves together into anything I could actually think or say. I felt another breath come in and then go out and I was dimly aware that a certain amount of time had passed and that the silence was getting uncomfortably long—but I really couldn’t bring together enough of the scurrying pieces of thought to make up a real sentence. Slowly, painfully, the wheels turned, and finally single words came back to me—bastard … kill … detective—and at last, with that third word, a picture floated up out of the scampering neurons and rose to the top of my swirling nonthoughts—a glowering, knuckleheaded portrait of a human ape with a low brow and a mean smile, and at last I had one entire syllable that made sense. “Hood,” I said. “He called you?”
“I think I have a right to know my husband killed somebody,” Rita said. “And he’s cheating on me?” she added, as if killing might be overlooked, but cheating was something truly despicable. It was not quite the proper order of our society’s priorities as I had come to understand them, but this was not the time to debate contemporary ethical concepts.
“Rita,” I said, with all the calm authority I could muster. “I barely knew this woman. Camilla.”
“Bullshit,” she said. “Richard said—the detective said there were pictures of you everywhere!”
“Yes, and Astor has pictures of the Jonas Brothers,” I said; and I thought it was a pretty good point, but for some reason Rita didn’t agree.
“Astor is eleven years old,” Rita said venomously, as if I was totally vile even to try this argument and she would never let me get away with something that low. “And she doesn’t stay out all night with the Jonas Brothers.”
“Camilla and I worked together,” I said, trying to break through the cloud of unreason. “And sometimes we have to work late. In public. With lots of cops all around us.”
“And did all of the cops have pictures of you?” she demanded. “In a binder? On the back of the toilet?! Please. Don’t insult my intelligence.”
I very badly wanted to say that I had to find it before I could insult it, but sometimes we have to sacrifice a very good line for the larger purpose at hand, and this was almost certainly one of those times. “Rita,” I said. “Camilla took pictures of me.” I put the palms of my hands up to show that I was man enough to admit an awkward fact. “Lots of them, apparently. Deborah says she had a crush on me. I can’t control any of that.” I sighed and shook my head, to let her see that the full weight of an unjust world lay comfortably on my broad shoulders. “But I have never, ever cheated on you. Not with Camilla, not with anyone else.”
I saw a first small flicker of doubt on her face—I really am very good at portraying a real human being, and this time I had the advantage of telling something that was very close to the truth. It was a genuine Method Acting Moment, and Rita could see that I was being sincere.
“Bullshit,” she said, but with less conviction. “All those nights when you just leave the house? With some stupid excuse about work? As if I was supposed to believe …” She shook her head and gathered steam again. “Goddamn it, I knew it was something like this. I just knew it, because— And now you killed her?”
It was a very uncomfortable moment, even more so than when she had first accused me. “All those nights” in question, I actually had been up to something: not quite an affair, and certainly nothing involving Camilla—just the quiet pursuit of my hobby, which was relatively innocent, at least in the present context. But I couldn’t tell her that, and of course, there was no proof of this innocence—at least, I hoped not; I mean, I was sure I’d always cleaned up quite thoroughly. Worst of all, though, was realizing that I had just assumed she hadn’t really noticed when I slipped “casually” out of the house, which made me look incredibly stupid, even to me.
But surviving in this life almost always means making the best of bad situations, and if a small moment of creativity is called for, I am usually up to the task—especially since I am not burdened by any compulsion to tell the truth. And so I took a breath and let my giant brain lead me out of the woods. “Rita,” I said. “My work is important to me. I help to catch some really bad people—not even people. They’re animals. The kind of animal that’s a real threat to all of us—even …” And I paused shamelessly for dramatic effect. “Especially the kids. Even Lily Anne.”
“And so you leave the house at night?” she said. “To do what?”
“I, um,” I said, as if I was a little bit embarrassed. “Sometimes I get an idea. About something that, you know. Might help break the case.”
“Oh, come on,” Rita said. “That’s incredibly— I mean, I’m not naive enough, for God’s sake—”
“Rita, damn it, you’re the same way—obsessed with your job,” I said. “You’ve been working nights lately, and … I mean, I thought you understood when I did, too.”
“I don’t slink out of the house at night to go to the office,” she said.
“But you don’t have to,” I said, and I felt myself gaining a little bit of momentum. “You can do your work in your head, or on a piece of paper. I need the equipment in the lab.”
“Well, but, I mean,” she said, and I could see the doubt creeping into her eyes. “I just assumed that— I mean, it makes more sense that, you know.”
“It makes more sense that I would cheat on someone as beautiful as you?” I said. “With somebody as drab and shapeless as Camilla Figg?” I know it isn’t considered proper to speak ill of the dead, and doing so puts you at risk of some kind of divine retribution. But as if to prove that God does not really exist, I bad-mouthed dear dead Camilla and yet no bolt of lightning crashed through the ceiling to turn Dexter into chitlins, and Rita’s expression even softened a bit.
“But that’s not …” she said, and to my great relief she was slipping back into her normal speech pattern of partial sentences. “I mean, Richard said— And you never even, all those late nights.” She blinked and fluttered one hand in the air. “How can it just—with all those pictures?”
“I know it looks bad,” I said, and then I had one of those wonderfully happy inspirations that only a totally empty, wicked, hollow mockery of a person could ever have the gall to actually use—which, of course, made it just perfect for me. “It’s looks bad to Detective Hood—Richard,” I said, and gave her a bitter shake of the head to show I had noticed she was on a first-name basis with the enemy. “So bad that I’m in a lot of trouble,” I said. “And to be honest, I thought you were the one person I could count on to stand by me. When I really need somebody in my corner.”
It was a perfect punch, a true body blow, and it took the wind out of her so completely that she collapsed into a chair as if she was an inflatable doll and somebody had just punctured her. “But that’s only …” she said. “I didn’t even— And he said,” she said. “I mean, he’s a detective.”
“A really bad detective,” I said. “He likes to beat up suspects to make them talk. And he doesn’t like me.”
“But if you didn’t do anything …” she said, trying one last time to convince herself that I actually did.
“People have been framed before,” I said wearily. “This is Miami.”